What a creature of habit I've become, living up here by myself! OK, maybe the ceiling falling in isn't a minor inconvenience, but I haven't been able to write a line of poetry with my desk moved into the bedroom. Something be wrong.

Maybe it's that I've started reading Yeats again for the first time in many years. I've been a little afraid of him, and experiencing once more how wonderful are even the early "minor" poems—"Fergus and the Druid," "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "The Stolen Child," "When You Are Old," "Cuchulain's Fight With the Sea," even the absurd Indian fantasies—well, it's just overwhelming. And then today a comment on an earlier posting led me to the extremely well-handled C. Little, No Less where I found Hardy's "Channel Firing". That didn't make me feel more hopeful for my poetry. But, hey! Hardy was 64 when he wrote that. I'm still a young 'un! (Shut up about Yeats.)

There have been good things in the last week or so. I sent poems out for the first time in a long time, some of them on the recommendation of one of the poets I most admire. My wife found a way for me to get to West Chester after all. I've worked with the crew fixing my ceiling, and I love that kind of work. I did it for a living for 5 or 6 years in the 90s, and, if I could count on insurance and retirement, I'd be doing it now. And I slept a lot today. That's a very good thing, and, even better, it's time to take Yeats' Collected to bed with me now. The only thing better than that would be my wife.